


burning the ashes

by empyrean



Category: Carole & Tuesday (Anime)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21722878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empyrean/pseuds/empyrean
Summary: After those miraculous seven minutes, the world keeps spinning. In the aftermath, Angela has to decide who she is, and what she's going to do with her life, all alone - or, well, mostly alone. Whether that's a gift or not is up for debate.
Relationships: Tuesday Simmons/Carole Stanley
Comments: 13
Kudos: 131
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	burning the ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VSSAKJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/gifts).



When Angela opens her eyes, they’re full of starlight. Arms looped around Carole and Tuesday, she feels their smiles, bright and golden, against her skin and tries to let as much of the moment as possible soak into her before it passes.

Those glorious, perfect seven minutes.

Seven minutes where she could believe she was still a whole person, that everything in the world was as wonderful as she thought they’d be when she was young.

The galaxy gets its seven minutes.

 _She_ gets seven minutes.

It can’t last.

When the moment passes and reality slams back into place, it brings the cold back with it.

Angela feels the frost caking her smile, ice lining her veins. The fire simmers down to embers and Angela Carpenter walks back into the snow.

She keeps working. Of course she does, what else is there? She talks with her mother’s estate managers, runs circles around Katy, goes on every chat show that calls and lets muscle memory guide her smile and the flick of her hand.

Mostly, she just feels empty.

She’s a bucket full of holes. Everything, praise, criticism, admiration, everything poured in just spills out the sides.

She finds herself avoiding Carole and Tuesday, even though she knows they would try to help.

Maybe _because_ they would try to help.

It works until the very first group interview she just after what everyone is calling the _miraculous seven minutes_. Squeezed onto a too-small sofa with Carole on one side and Tuesday on the other, their arms looped around hers and their sweet sincere eyes smiling into hers, she feels trapped even though she could easily break their grips. She can see the glitter of a host of camera drones hovering overhead, so she pulls her expression into order.

This, at least, she’s good at. Smiling for the camera and pretending she’s not screaming on the inside.

There’s talk of music, Carole and Tuesday’s voices bouncing between her like a stereo system, and in the middle her own voice, like she’s on lead vocal. It feels more _right_ than it should.

Angela pulls out her best, glossy polished-to-perfection paparazzi-friendly quotes for the occasion, deflecting the probing comments and smoothly redirecting to discussions of music and modelling with the practice she’s had years to work on.

What would happen, she wonders, if she carved herself open and let her insides spill out for all to see.

Isn't that what real music is?

The interviewer, maybe sensing a more pliable target, asks Tuesday about the Mars’ Brightest competition, and the rivalry they hadn’t quite managed to keep away from the cameras.

It feels like it could have been a decade ago, that time. She clenches her hands, staring down at as Carole talks about writing music for the competition. Her nails are chipped, the vivid flame-bright acrylic peeling away. Mama will be so angry-

Her throat closes around the thought, like someone had tightened their fist around her neck.

And Tuesday is talking like she has never been taught to lie.

‘We admired Angela a lot, right?’ She looks to Carole, who’s already nodding and turning towards her, two magnets always following each other’s poles.

Angela summons a laugh from somewhere. ‘Oh? And why wouldn’t you?’

‘Your voice is very honest.’ Carole adds. ‘If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t listen when they hear it. You always tell them the truth. Even when it hurts you, right?’

And there’s no script she’s learnt to help her answer that.

. . . 

She comes back home to Aladdin downloading datapacks from an offplanet source is can’t or won’t disclose. Snatches of melody, fragments of chords dumped into her lap. Cold, manufactured, but ready for her to dig out their heart and put it into something new.

It’s probably the closest thing to a gift Tao has ever given anyone.

She lets Aladdin run them through as she kicks her shoes off into the corner and digs through Katy’s neatly-stacked piles of ‘this is important’ and ‘please read this’ and ‘don’t ignore this again Angela’ to find the card with Tao’s AI stored onto it.

The room is washed with blue as it loads up and silently begins to run through its routine, a parody of her own face and body eternally programmed to only learn and never do anything by itself.

That would always be the problem with Tao's AI.

He could never make something able, _willing_ to die on stage.

She idly daydreams of what would have happened if she had run off with him. Some life spent eternally looking over her shoulder? Some sad parting at a spaceship terminal? _We’ll always have Olympus Mons._

She snorts, and shuts down the AI.

. . . 

A few mornings later, Katy sidles into her office with a tablet clutched close to her chest, chewing on her bottom lip and staring at Angela with an expression more suited to a bullfighter staring down a bull.

The tense silences stretches out between them, until Angela snaps.

‘What?’

Katy puts the tablet down in front of her like it’s primed to explode.

The last order of Mama’s estate sits in front of her. The house.

She’d grown up in that house. She’d run the halls, sung in the bathroom, danced in front of the mirrors. 

Whenever she went back, it still stank of misery.

She bites back the instinct that says to burn it down. She’s done enough to feed the tabloids for a while.

_Public face, Angela. We must not allow anything that could become gossip worthy._

_Fuck you, Mama_ , she thinks, and signs the order to sell the house.

She storms out afterwards, leaving Katy behind to handle the fallout. She only feels a little guilty about it.

 _Doctor Zeeman designed you,_ Tao had said.

What does that even mean? _Designed me for what._

She was a designer baby. Doesn’t that mean she was an orphan from the beginning?

She draws to a stop at the crossroad. There’s the rush of people pressing in on all sides, going in every direction. Over it all there’s the buzz of the traffic and the sight of Phobos and Deimos from on high.

She had no idea where she’s going.

. . . 

The problem with Carole and Tuesday - apart from their songs, singing, overall discography, fashion sense, general habit of _getting in her way_ \- is that there’s always _there_. 

It’s like something tells them to always show up when they’re either least expected or most needed. And that something is what leads her to almost walking straight into Carole and she steps out of the supermarket with an armful of groceries.

‘Angela!’ And of course, where there’s one, there’s the other. Tuesday eagerly grabs her arm and pulls her along, chattering about how they need to catch up and if she’s not too busy would she like to come with them.

Well, Angela has nowhere better to be. Not now. She tells them she’d like to use their shower and bites back any words that sound like _please help me_.

As she walks behind them, watching them chatter happily and wave at fans, Angela thinks of the confrontation after that last concert. There’d been police gathered outside, though apparently they hadn’t been sure whether they should arrest everyone present or just make sure everyone present left before some riot started.

Angela, already preparing for the social backlash that headline would cause, had her attention drawn by a figure emerging from the crowd. She’d glanced over at the duo next to her as Valerie Simmons strode out of the sea of uniforms.

Tuesday’s eyes were wide, and Angela had recognised that look, half caught between love and terror.

She’d seen it in the mirror, enough times.

It was probably not the kind of confrontation the former presidential candidate wanted to happen in the glare of the solar system's media, and Valerie had seemed to realise that - but when she gestured Tuesday away to follow her, Tuesday had just _stared_.

She’d planted her feet, her shoulders went back and Angela could see her tighten her fingers around Carole's. 

She was still tiny little Tuesday Simmons. But at that moment she had looked like a giant.

‘I’m going home, mother.’

‘Yes, Tuesday, follow me.’

‘No. I am going _home_. With Carole.’ 

Angela had to look away, so no one would see her smile.

_Mama, I’m doing fine on my own._

. . . 

When she emerges from the shower, there’s a fragile melody wafting down from the roof. When she clambers up, Carole pauses to wave one free hand at her - the other’s trapped by Tuesday, pressed up close on Carole’s left, her guitar abandoned next to her and fingers locked together like perfectly woven lace.

The other annoying thing about Carole and Tuesday is how much time they spend looking at each other and no one else.

‘Ah, sorry if I woke you.’ Carole, smiling, soft-eyed with affection, turns without ever breaking contact with Tuesday. ‘I’m trying to practice but _someone_ has my melody hand.’

‘You could just wake her up, you know.’

Carole just shrugs, unashamed. ‘She’s too cute.’ 

Looking at the pair of them, it’s almost cruel when Angela manages to place the song as _The loneliest girl_.

‘Well, you’re going to have to wake her up. I need to talk to her.’

Carole scowls ( _isn’t that just precious_ ), but Tuesday yawns and blinks sleepily at her. ‘About what?’

‘About mother.’

It has a weight to it, that word. A stone dropped in a deep well, disturbing everything around it.

Tuesday blinks, smiles, frowns, a slow-motion pattern of emotions running across her face one after the other. Then, she nods. ‘I understand. Carole, could I have some tea?’

Carole, looks slowly between them and then just shrugs, ruffling Tuesday’s hair as she walks past to clamber back into the living room. 

Once it’s just them, the distant bustle of traffic outside and Carole making a lot of noise downstairs, Tuesday explains it, eyes averted and staring a hole into her guitar. A doll, she says. One of the expensive ones, to be put on a high shelf and only taken down and dusted off for public viewing when necessary.

‘And when was necessary?’

‘Ah ha haha.’ Tuesday laughs breathily, Angela can hear the nerves in how tight her voice is. _Breathe, girl_. ‘Never? I always wondered when I would get to leave, and after a while I realised I was never going to be allowed to. I guess I just wanted what would make Mother happy, at first. I was made to be nice and stupid and obedient. Then I decided...’

‘...yes?’ Angela prompts when it looks like Tuesday is going to stop there.

‘We don’t have to be what we were made for. _We_ _aren’t what we were made for_.’ Tuesday looks up, her jaw set. ‘And I am not my mother's opinion of me.’

There’s a moment of silence, a beat that feels like a prayer for the dead, and then another that feels like permission to keep living.

'When did you get so smart?'

Tuesday smiles like the sunrise.

'When I met Carole.'

. . .

They don’t mean to stay out all night, Carole eventually clambering back up and chatting with them into the early morning.

Angela’s been working since almost before she could work. She knows how to talk business, how to talk modelling, marketing, music. Carole’s self-taught and is mostly making it up as she goes along on the strength of her own confidence and Tuesday still flinches away from cameras and trips over her words in public.

This? None of them know how to do this right. But Angela’s never been able to talk like this to anyone, never had people she can talk to about singing and be so completely _understood_ so it maybe doesn’t have to be right.

In the moments before sunrise, when they both think Angela’s asleep, she can hear them talking.

‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to say this. I didn’t know...’

‘...how to say it, right? I don’t think it matters how you say it. Just that it gets said.’

'Right. You’re right. I love you, Tue.'

'I love you too, Carole!'

'N-no, I mean, I _love_ you.'

'Yes, I know. _I love you, Carole_.'

The silence afterwards feels like a kiss.

In the morning, Carole offers for Angela to stay again - even when, silly sweet girls, they know she has a perfectly good apartment.

‘Do you even have space?’ She asks, looking around at the accumulated clutter. It’s a mess, but it looks homey in a way her home never did.

‘Of course! You can borrow the sofa.’

And because she can’t resist needling them - their fault, who said they could be so disgustingly sweet in front of her - she asks ‘Oh, and where is Tuesday sleeping?’

Carole sputters and Tuesday turns a dull brick red, eyes boring into the floor. Angela laughs.

‘You don’t need to tell me, and it’s fine - I just need your help for one more thing.’

A few years ago, a few weeks ago, the words _I need your help_ would have never occurred to her as a thing she could even say. Who would have even helped her? This time at least, she knows it won’t be a text that never gets answered.

Like miracles, fires don’t start by themselves.

They both look at each other, then her.

‘What for?’

She grins. 

‘I’m going to write a song. With you.’

Outside, passersby jump as two people scream at once.

  
  


. . .

She watches Carole run through her scales, Tuesday absentmindedly tuning her guitar and smiling at Carole in a way she’s only ever seen properly described in songs.

‘So what do you want to write about?’

‘Aaaah…’

_We don't have to be what we were made for. We aren't what we were made for._

_I was born for something but it doesn't have to be this._

She thinks of an empty house. Flowers on graves. Tuesday’s fingers tucked into Carole’s and the sun rising on a new day on Mars.

There’s no crowd of admirers this time. It’s just her, Carole, Tuesday, and Katy who snuck in with Gus and is hiding around the corner and pretending not to listen.

It’s as good a place to start as any. Really, the only person she needs to please is herself.

Angela takes her first breath in a new world.

‘Let's start with beginnings.’

**Author's Note:**

> Un-edited.
> 
> Oh man, thank you for my prompt, kind yuletide requester, I went mad trying to fit them all in because I couldn't bear to just have one thing in here.
> 
> On rewatching, I feel so sorry for Angela - poor kid, she's only a teenager and has everything just dumped on her. I was originally going to go full Carole/Tuesday focus, but Angela needed some starlight, and having those two crazy kids kind of get their feelings out in the background while Angela needled them just worked better, somehow.
> 
> And I have a soft spot for Tuesday and her occasional bouts of extreme confidence and knowing who and what she is. She's shy and submissive but she's also the girl who ran away from home and started a fire in Ertegun's house after he insulted them so we know when she makes a choice she sticks by it.


End file.
